In computer programming jargon, a heisenbug is a software bug that seems to disappear or alter its behavior when one attempts to study it. The term is a pun on the name of Werner Heisenberg, the physicist who first introduced the uncertainty principle, and it is a reference to the observer effect, which states that the act of observing a system inevitably alters its state. In electronics, the traditional term is probe effect, where attaching a test probe to a device changes its behavior. The term has been criticized because it confuses Heisenberg's uncertainty principle with the observer effect in quantum mechanics, which are two different concepts.
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